He's
the nexus
of the neocon
network in Washington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff,
and assistant
to the President, whose office is the operational nerve center
of the War Party. It is Libby and Cheney who made repeated trips
to the CIA, pressuring them to accept tall tales of Al Qaeda connections
and assorted "weapons of mass destruction" supposedly lurking in Baghdad
 including the Niger-uranium yellowcake "evidence" that Iraq
had acquired fissionable material for a nuclear weapon.

The
documents purportly proving the Niger-Iraq uranium connection turned
out to be a crude
forgery.

Pressed
by Pat Buchanan to name the leaker, Johnson refused to deny it was
Libby; he furthermore stated that the perpetrator was no stranger
to "scandal."

Johnson
also rebutted widespread stories that Plame wasn't an undercover intelligence
officer. Clifford
May, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, has said
her status was an open secret, and that she was an analyst whose life
would not be placed in danger if her CIA connection was revealed.
Asked by Buchanan if Plame's work would have taken her overseas, where
compromising her CIA affiliation would put her in physical danger,
Johnson's answer was an emphatic yes. Furthermore, he emphasized,
her outing would put all her various overseas contacts in jeopardy.